Doors
by Sensaiman
Summary: Post Countdown. Kate makes an important realization


Doors

A Castle Fanfiction

By Sensaiman

_**My entry into the post **__**Countdown**__** madness. Seriously I wasn't going to write one, but this idea just came into my head. Plus I had a notion about why Motorcycle Boy came back. Tell me what you think. **_

_**Disclaimer: If I owned them Beckett and Castle would be on their honeymoon by now.**_

It begins with the closing of doors. As he walks toward the elevator, Beckett can't keep her eyes off him. Even though she is wrapped in someone else's arms, it is Castle she is conscious of. Her eyes stay on him all the way down the hall, into the elevator, and, when he turns, she sees it. The look! It is only for an instant, just as the doors close, but she recognizes it. She's seen it hundreds of times, but just now she can't place it. Then the doors close and he's GONE. Involuntarily her head turns and she places it on Josh's chest. But only for a moment. She looks up at the man holding her, she feels his arms around her, and realizes these are not the arms she wants. His is not the face she wants looking down at her.

"Josh", she says, "let me go please".

He looks at her in surprise, but releases her.

"Is everything okay, Kate?"

"Yes, I just don't like being held here in the squad room", she replies lamely.

He shrugs, and is about to say something when his phone rings. Taking it out of his pocket, he says, "I've got to take this, sorry".

"That's okay".

As he steps away she has to admit to a feeling of relief at his distance.

It is at this moment that Detective Karpowski walks out of the conference room with a woman walking beside her. Beckett realizes that, since her team was dealing with the bomb threat, Karpowski and Donaldson took the only murder that day. A stockbroker was mugged and killed at an ATM. This woman must be his wife or something. As Karpowski steps over to tell her partner something, the woman turns and looks at Kate. When she sees that look on her face, Kate remembers what kind of look Castle had when the doors closed, it was the same look. The look she has seen on hundreds of family members when they are told that their husband, father, brother, lover, or friend is gone forever.

What could have happened to put that look of utter devastation on Richard Castle's face? Alexis and Martha are safe in the Hamptons, the people at the 12th are safe, the city is safe, they, Castle and Beckett, are safe; so what?

She starts replaying the events from the last two days in her mind. The scene with Josh about Haiti, her confession in the HAZMAT tent that she was tired of the "one foot in one foot out" type of relationship. Telling him that she wants someone who is there for her and someone she can be therefore. She remembers how he started to say something, but was interrupted by the Hazmat technician.

She remembers them getting sent home by Fallon, the improvised shower curtain murder board; the discovery of the freezer and the bomb. She can feel the cold again, and his arms wrapped about him. She recalls the realization that this may be it, and how if she is going to die she wants him to know the truth, that she is in love him. She feels herself losing consciousness again before she can say it. She hears again his last "Stay with me, baby, stay with me".

She remembers Lainie telling her how close they had both been to death, how in the moments just before they were rescued, Castle had taken off his coat and wrapped it around her. If they had not found them at almost that instance he would have been dead.

Then, her memory takes her to those last terrible moments, as the partners stood together hand in hand and watched the bomb tick their lives away. She thinks again, as she thought then, well if we have to go out this is how I would want it, with him, together. She smiles as she recalls how at the last moment, the nine year old who has to touch everything, reasserted itself in Castle's mind. She sees him grab all the wires and pull. Then she is in his arms again, and she almost screams out, "I love you, I love you" But she didn't, even though every fiber in her being wanted to. She wanted to wait until he was sure it was the truth and not just said in relief for not dying.

Finally she replays the last few moments in her mind. Castle standing outside of Montgomery's office talking to her. She can tell that he is about ask her something or tell her something important, but instead he says something lame about needing sleep, and then he is walking away, and she is being wrapped up in arms that are not his, and he is gone. As she rehashes that moment a detail that she has not recalled before intrudes itself on her memory, just before he said he needed sleep his eye moved a little above her as if he saw something behind her. Now she knows it was Josh. He walked away because he saw Josh coming. He left so she could be happy.

And now she knows what or who has destroyed Castle's world. She has. In that instant everything becomes clear, and she knows what she must do. She turns to her desk, grabs her stuff, and runs to the elevator.

Just as she is about to push the button, a voice calls to her from the benches by the stairwell.

"Hey, Kate where are you going?"

Oh crap in her rush to go to Castle, she has completely forgotten about Josh. Well she thinks, it looks like someone is going to get their heartbroken tonight one way or the other, but it is not going to be Richard Castle, if she has anything to say about it.

"Oh Josh", she says, "I'm sorry. I forgot you were there. Listen I need to go out now, but I'll call you tomorrow. We need too talk".

"I won' be here tomorrow", comes the reply.

"What, why not?"

"Because I'll be in Haiti".

"Haiti", she says, "I thought you had given up the trip. I thought you were staying".

"No, I mean yes I stayed, but only because they postponed my flight. Some kind of DHS thing I guess. I came back to tell you that I don't think this, us, is going to work out"

"What", she hopes he doesn't hear the relief in her voice.

"Yeah. Look Kate, I like being a Doctor Without Borders. I like being able to go off to Haiti, or Africa, or Timbuktu when the need arises. When we first started dating you seemed to be okay with the impermanence of our relationship, but lately I've noticed that you seem to want more. Its like you've come to realize you need someone who will always be there for you. That's not what I want. I came back to tell you that".

"Thank you, Josh, for being honest. I wish you luck. Go out there and do good work. Goodbye"

She gives him a quick peck on the cheek, pushes the down button, and walks out of his life forever.

When she reaches the Crown Vic she can see the barricades are still up, so she does something she has never done before. She uses her police powers for her own ends. She puts the light on the top of her car, turns on the siren, and races to Castle's loft.

As she stands in front of his door, she can hear movement in response to her knocking.

The door slowly opens and she sees the Ghost of Richard Castle staring at her. At last in that first instance that what she thinks it is. His hair is mussed, his clothes are rumpled, there is stubble on his chin, and his eyes are red and puffy. It strikes her like a physical blow; he has been crying, and, without even having to ask, she knows he has been crying because of her. She has broken his heart. Without even meaning it, without even realizing she has that power, she has broken Richard Castle's heart. The irony of the situation does not escape her; for three years she has been afraid that he would break her heart, and now she knows that he is not the heartbreaker in the relationship; she is. In that moment of revelation, she vows that if takes the rest of her life she will make this up to him.

Suddenly he is speaking, "Kate, what are you doing here? Where is…"

She puts her hand over his mouth before he can say the name. With her other hand she pushes back into the loft. As soon as they are all the way in, and she has shut the door, she replaces her hand with her lips.

At first he freezes, but slowly, as her tongue licks across his lips begging for entry, he responds and the kiss deepens. This is their second kiss, and it is unlike the first. When they kissed in that alley, it was full of fear, adrenaline, and passion. This kiss is full of love, hope, and promise. In her heart she knows this is only the first of what will be a lifetime of kisses.

Slowly they break apart, and she can see the wonder, and confusion in her eyes.

She moves back in slowly, but this time she does not kiss his lips, instead she begins a long, gradual assault on his face and neck, and as she kisses and licks him, she begins muttering, "Oh Rick I'm so sorry. I love you, I always have, and I always will".

He begins to respond with kisses and licks of his own. He also begins to reciprocate with his own professions of love.

Finally, reluctantly they stop. Se steps back and takes his had. She leads him over to the couch, gently, pushes him down, and then does the most unBeckettlike thing she can think of; she sits in his lap.

He tries to speak but his voice is too full of emotion to make a coherent sentence. He doesn't need to, she knows what he wants to, needs to, hear.

"Josh and I are through", she says.

"Oh, Kate I am so sorry. I didn't mean to come between you. Would it help if I called…"?

"Shut up Castle", it is a command and a tone he has grown to know and love over the years, "If you must know, I didn't break up with him, he broke up with me, or more to the point he beat me to the break up"

"But why?" leave it to Castle to ask a silly question at a time like this.

'Because I am not what he wants, and more to the point he is not who I want," she looks at him, all the love she has felt for him for more that 3 years shining from her eyes, "You, Richard Castle are who I want. If you'll have me"

He doesn't say anything, he reaches up, pulls her head to his and kisses her deeply.

It ends with an open door. In the morning, when Alexis and Martha walk into the loft, they find them together on the couch; wrapped in each other's arms, sound asleep.

As the two Castle women stare in wonder at the pair, Kate shifts her position to snuggle a little closer to him, and, half consciously, reaches up and caresses his face.

Suddenly the thought occurs to Alexis and Martha that instead of two Castle women, it looks like there are now three, and that is fine with them.


End file.
